Sonnet 1 Sonnet 3 Sonnet 12 Sonnet 18 Sonnet 19 Sonnet 20 Sonnet 29 Sonnet 30 Sonnet 33 Sonnet 55 Sonnet 60 Sonnet 65 Sonnet 71 Sonnet 73 Sonnet 94 Sonnet 106 Sonnet 116 Sonnet 126 Sonnet 127 Sonnet 129 Sonnet 130 Sonnet 138 Sonnet 144 Sonnet 146 Sonnet 147

Sonnet 1

Original Text

From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauty’s rose might never die, But as the riper should by time decease, His tender heir might bear his memory:

Modern English

From the most beautiful creatures we want children, so that beauty's flower will never fully die — when the parent passes away with age, a tender heir will keep that beauty alive.

Original Text

But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel, Making a famine where abundance lies, Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:

Modern English

But you are fixated only on your own reflection, feeding your beauty's flame with itself as fuel, creating scarcity where there could be abundance, your own worst enemy, too cruel to your own sweet self.

Original Text

Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament, And only herald to the gaudy spring, Within thine own bud buriest thy content, And tender churl mak’st waste in niggarding:

Modern English

You are the world's freshest ornament right now, the only one who can announce the coming of spring, yet you bury all your gifts inside an unopened bud, hoarding what you have like a miser wasting his own wealth.

Original Text

Pity the world, or else this glutton be, To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

Modern English

Take pity on the world — or else be the glutton who devours what belongs to the world, taking it to the grave.

Shakespeare's Sonnets

Sonnet 1

Sonnet 1